Despite enormous technological advancement, producing an animation or caricature based on a person's face is still work that is mostly done by an artist. That is, there is not a process that is capable of automating such a process that results in realistic or desired results. This means that for the vast majority of users such an animation or caricature is not reasonably obtained.
In addition, hand drawn caricatures have a number of drawbacks. For example, the resulting drawings do not exist in a digital form. In order for a digital copy to be created, the hand drawing must be scanned or otherwise digitized. This means more work in addition to obtaining the caricature.
Further, the caricatures are 2D images. That is, the caricature is a drawing and incapable of being animated or otherwise manipulated in a 3D manner. If the customer prefers a 3D animation, then a much more required and involved process is required. Or, a facial image is simply pasted onto an animated character, resulting in an animation that is not realistic. Neither option may be attractive to a particular user.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for automatic creation of an avatar from a user supplied image. Moreover, there is a need in the art for a process which can animate the avatar.